July 1: Serpentine Gallery Pavilion

Zaha Hadid, Jean Nouvel, Rem Koolhaas, Frank Gehry—the list of designers who have landed in London’s Kensington Gardens has expanded with each Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, an annual project now in its 11th year. The premise is ambitious: Invite a renowned architect, one who’s never built in England, to design and erect a freestanding pavilion in front of the gallery in roughly six months. This year the challenge was put to Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the 2009 Pritzker Prize winner known for his serene thermal baths in Vals, Switzerland. On July 1 he will unveil what gallery director Julia Peyton-Jones calls “a garden within a garden”—a flora-festooned collaboration (above) with famed garden designer Piet Oudolf.